Dance
by ShardsandAshes
Summary: Minerva McGonagall, Amelia Bones, and a dance.


**Disclaimer****: I don't own it, and I make no money off of it. Please don't sue me.**

**AN:**** This story is AU and takes place during the first Yule Ball to be held at Hogwarts after it has reopened after the Final Battle. All the surviving seventh year students have returned for their "eighth year." There is an established marriage between Minerva McGonagall and Amelia Bones. Also, I have set them as attending Hogwarts together when they were students.**

"It still amazes me that, year after year, the students change, but their dancing skills don't improve," Minerva commented to her wife as she and Amelia stood at the edge of the Great Hall, watching the students at the Yule Ball. It was the first since the end of the war and the reopening of Hogwarts. Despite her disparaging observation, Minerva smiled as she watched the "eighth years" circling around the dance floor and putting the younger years to shame.

Amelia laughed. "Well, at least we haven't had to send anyone to Poppy yet. That has to count for something." Her navy blue eyes danced mischievously as she innocently asked, "Do you remember the first Yule Ball that we danced together?"

Minerva stepped back abruptly into the shadows, and Amelia smirked as her wife tried to hide her blush.

Amelia couldn't keep the smugness out of her words. "Clearly, you do remember."

The elder witch desperately tried to regain her composure. "It was the first time you kissed me in public." She sighed. "And that was the first night I spent in another person's bed." Minerva finally met Amelia's eyes and smiled. "We broke so many rules that night, but I have never once regretted it."

"Neither have I," Amelia said, reaching out to run her fingers through her wife's loose, unbound hair. Minerva made a soft, feline sound of satisfaction, and Amelia grinned. There was so much of the cat in her sometimes, especially when it came to her hair. Amelia had coaxed Minerva into leaving her hair completely unrestrained for the ball, and she was delighted to be able to give her wife such private attention in public.

The war had mellowed her witch, but it was time to see just how far Minerva could be pushed.

"Do you remember the dance we danced that night?" Amelia asked, continuing to stroke Minerva's hair.

Minerva grinned in spite of herself. "We danced the tango. Merlin, we were lucky the headmaster didn't decide to expel us both for that!" Her green eyes were far away, remembering. "Even by today's standards, it would have been considered risqué."

Still concealed by the shadows, Amelia slipped an arm around her wife's waist and drew her closer.

"But it was fun, wasn't it?" Amelia eyed Minerva till the elder witch sighed wistfully.

"Aye, it was that and so much more." For a moment, Minerva lost herself in the memory of the two of them, in the first bloom of womanhood, dancing together so scandalously that only Amelia's charm and Minerva's spotless record (as well as the intervention of Professor Albus Dumbledore who remembered his own Gellert far too well) had persuaded the headmaster to refrain from expelling them.

When Amelia had asked her about it much later, when formal robes had been discarded carelessly on the floor of Minerva's Head Girl suite and the two of them were watching the sun rise from her bed, Minerva had been silent for a time.

Finally, she had smiled and said, "Rules have been the most important thing in my life for so long. But you're teaching me that some things are more important." Minerva had shifted, startling Amelia as she straddled her. "I think some rules were made to be broken."

Minerva gasped as Amelia's rather forceful kiss dragged her from her memories back to the present.

"I think you remember a little too well!" She paused, and Minerva shifted uneasily, recognizing the gleam of mischief in Amelia's navy blue eyes. "Instead of just remembering, would you like to see if we can still do it?"

Minerva realized at once what her wife was suggesting and balked. "Amelia, we can't possibly do that! Aside from how utterly inappropriate it would be, I can't possibly move like that anymore!"

Amelia just laughed. "We'll just slow it down a little then. But come on, Min. Dance with me!"

Her wife's hand pulled her insistently from the shadows even as Amelia flicked her wand to change the music. With one last tug, Minerva found herself in the middle of the dance floor, staring into Amelia's laughing eyes and acutely aware of the students and staff riveted to the two of them. The dance floor was empty save for them.

Then the music started.

Minerva had been right. Neither of them could quite manage to move like they had so many years ago. So Amelia led them, as she had the first time, but she led her wife into a slower, more sensual tango that stole the breath of every member of their captivated audience. Though Amelia led, Minerva held her own, unable to resist the allure of her wife even after a marriage of more than fifty years.

It was like the first time all over again. And it was so much better than that.

Their hands and bodies were where they shouldn't have been, and even Amelia knew that they should have cared. But they didn't. They didn't, and Minerva decided that it was alright.

The Dark Lord was dead. The man who had killed him was in the room with them, and everyone in the Great Hall had been through the darkest of hells together. But they were alive.

That was enough.

When Minerva bent her backward, nearly to the floor, in a move that Amelia had not imagined her wife could still manage, she caught the elder witch in a kiss and didn't let go. Minerva's gasp of surprise was swallowed by Amelia's mouth and tongue as she seized the chance to French kiss Minerva there in front of everyone. To her credit, Minerva not only allowed it but returned it, even as her hand settled low on Amelia's hip, pulling her into a tighter embrace as she set the shorter witch on her feet.

The music stopped. For a moment, silence reigned, broken only by the rapid breathing of two witches trying to recover their composure as headmistress and professor of Hogwarts. Amelia rested her head against Minerva's shoulder. Lights from the Great Hall caught the gold of the wedding rings adorning their entwined hands, hands that were no longer beautiful and no longer young.

But where youth had faded, love had grown.


End file.
